- EndpointSlice generation is now incremented when labels change. ([#99750](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99750), [@robscott](https://github.com/robscott)) [SIG Network]

- New plugin_evaluation_total is added to the scheduler.This metric counts how many times the specific plugin affects the scheduling result. The metric does not get incremented when the plugin has nothing to do with an incoming Pod. ([#115082](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/115082), [@sanposhiho](https://github.com/sanposhiho))

- Fixes conversion error in multi-version custom resources that could cause metadata.generation to increment on no-op patches or updates of a custom resource. ([#88995](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/88995), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt)) [SIG API Machinery]

- Fixes conversion error in multi-version custom resources that could cause metadata.generation to increment on no-op patches or updates of a custom resource. ([#88995](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/88995), [@liggitt](https://github.com/liggitt)) [SIG API Machinery]

  
  - `rest_client_transport_cache_entries` is a gauge metric
  with the number of existing entries in the internal cache
  
  - `rest_client_transport_create_calls_total` is a counter
  that increments each time a new transport is created, storing
  the result of the operation needed to generate it: hit, miss
  or uncacheable. ([#117295](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117295), [@aojea](https://github.com/aojea))

* add goroutine to move unschedulable pods to activeq if they are not retried for more than 1 minute ([#72558](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/72558), [@denkensk](https://github.com/denkensk))
* scheduler: use incremental scheduling cycle in PriorityQueue to put all in-flight unschedulable pods back to active queue if we received move request ([#73309](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/73309), [@cofyc](https://github.com/cofyc))

For the 1.8 release, SIG Node continued to focus
on a broad set of workload types, including hardware and performance
sensitive workloads such as data analytics and deep learning. The SIG also
delivered incremental improvements to node reliability.

[SIG Node]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/tree/master/sig-node

### SIG Network

  - If the custom resource participates the spec/status convention, the metadata.generation of the CR increments when there is any change, except for the changes to the metadata or the changes to the status.
  - If the custom resource does not participate the spec/status convention, the metadata.generation of the CR increments when there is any change to the CR, except for changes to the metadata.

### SIG Cluster Lifecycle

SIG Cluster Lifecycle focused on improving kubeadm’s user experience by including a set of new commands related to maintaining the kubeadm configuration file, the API version of which has now has been incremented to `v1alpha2`. These commands can handle the migration of the configuration to a newer version, printing the default configuration, and listing and pulling the required container images for bootstrapping a cluster.

* Don't log private SSH key ([#24506](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/24506), [@timstclair](https://github.com/timstclair))
* Incremental improvements to kubelet e2e tests ([#24426](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/24426), [@pwittrock](https://github.com/pwittrock))